April 20: The telecom secretary, Mr R. Chandrasekhar, said on Wednesday that his department has received replies from all the operators who were issued show cause notices for not meeting the eligibility criteria for licences. He said that the government will soon decide on action against companies found guilty. “The replies to all the earlier show cause notices for the cancellation on account of eligibility have been received. While for failure of the roll-out, they (operators) have 60 days to reply,” said Mr Chandrasekhar on the sidelines of a Ficci event.
CAG in its report on November 2010 had found that the former telecom minister, A. Raja, had issued majority of the new licences to such firms which were ineligible to offer telecom services in India at the time of applying for these licences. The number of such ineligible licences were put by CAG at 85 out of 122 licences issued by Mr Raja in 2008. These firms as per CAG report include Uninor, Allianz Infratech (merged with Etisalat DB), Loop Telecom, Videocon Telecommunications and STel. “Many of these companies suppressed facts, disclosed incomplete information and submitted false and fictitious documents for getting licences,” the CAG had said.
The telecom minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, had on November 30 announced that the telecom department will issue notices to such 85 firms that had faked their eligibility criteria. The CAG had said that A. Raja had issued licences to new firms in 2008 in a process which “lacked transparency and appeared to have been done with the objective of favouring a few firms”.